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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759882">Maybes Come in Years and Days</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk'>ALC_Punk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Friendship, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:03:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker is spiraling down and doesn't see a light at the end of any tunnel.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Booker | Sebastien le Livre &amp; Nile Freeman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>107</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maybes Come in Years and Days</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I feel like multiple people have probably already written this, but I thought, what the hell. Besides, I liked the idea enough to flesh it out from a two-hundred word drabble I was never going to post.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>A year and a day.</b>
</p><p>The text was something for Booker to hold onto, and then he forgot it in the morass of alcohol and drugs. Someone had managed a designer thing that caused heart palpitations, but brilliant highs.</p><p>He could spend days in his flat, draped over the sofa, eyes wide and stars dancing around him.</p><p>Time would pass, and he couldn't even <i>feel</i> it.</p><p>Quynh walked back into his life on a lucid day--well, mostly lucid. He'd been drunk and staggering, enjoying the lows of the alcohol as he watched her watch him. Like Andy used to, sometimes. But they'd never known each other, and she certainly wasn't enough to bring him out of his melancholy and depression-fueled stupor. </p><p>He had <i>decades</i> to burn, and one little blip wouldn't distract. </p><p>But the text came back one morning, as he was clearing the haze, post-death.</p><p>
  <b>Almost been a year and a day. Meet me in two?</b>
</p><p>That number was blocked, but he stared at the message for a long time before realizing that he really didn't like the stench of himself.</p><p>A long shower with scrubbing and soap in places which he'd not bothered with in forever, and he stood in front of the wardrobe. Pitiful choice in clothing, he ended up on jeans and a black t-shirt.</p><p>Spending two days <i>sober</i> was worse than spending two days being shot over and over, or buried alive. He'd been buried alive, once. Nicky had sat with him through the nightmares for months after that.</p><p>And then Andromache had helped him bury them in drink and worse.</p><p>The memory of her smile, touch, taste, even the multiple memories of her drinking him under hundreds of thousands of tables stabbed him with pain and longing. She had <i>understood</i>. She had been like him.</p><p>Now she was <i>free</i>.</p><p>And all he wanted was oblivion.</p><p><b>Ten minutes,</b> pinged the message, followed by a location.</p><p>A cafe, lunch having tailed off. The sun was warm on his head, bleaching out his brain and thoughts as he sat at one of the outdoor tables. The waitress took his coffee order and returned with it as he waited.</p><p>Ten minutes on the dot, and Nile sat down across from him.</p><p>Military precision, he could have admired that, once.</p><p>The silence stretched, only broken by the waitress, coffee, water, and sugar packets. Nile finally broke it, mouth stretching into a slight grin, "Wasn't sure you'd come."</p><p>"Didn't want to."</p><p>Lie.</p><p>"Mmm. Joe's gotten to plan double-H-zee-alpha on ways to kill you."</p><p>Booker closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting the sun dazzle the inside of his eye-lids. He'd tried death by sunlight, once. It took too long, and he no longer had the patience for a slow death.</p><p>"Found Nicky a great recipe for curry," Nile said, not seeming to care that he wasn't responding. "And I married Andy in Toronto."</p><p>"See your family?"</p><p>Booker wasn't going to ask about Andy and marriage, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know the story or not.</p><p>"Thought hard about it." The silence landed again, the clink of Nile's glass, and the movement of her throat as she swallowed the only things to break it in their little circle of time and place.</p><p>"Didn't."</p><p>Opening his eyes, he lowered his chin to study the woman across from him. She was so young, she could be a girl, but she'd killed and seen far too much death already. No child, then. "What is this?"</p><p>He was walling himself off, had walled himself off. There would be no chinks in his armor for her to get under and into. No ways that she could remind him how much he'd lost, how much more he needed to lose.</p><p>"You can't always be alone. Even a year was too much," Nile said, eyes sad as she looked at him.</p><p>"And a day." Pedantic. Stupid.</p><p>"Yep." Relaxing into her chair, she said, "Nicky thinks Joe will relent in a decade or so, that he'll come around and maybe understand. Or does understand, and that's why he hates you right now. But what will you have tried in a decade?"</p><p>The word was dragged from him, rasping and tearing, as though he were shouting it even as he murmured it quietly. "Everything."</p><p>A snort escaped Nile. "Thought so."</p><p>"Why didn't you see your family?"</p><p>"Well, like you said... no, that's not true." Nile took a drink from her glass, then met his gaze. "It's too complicated, these days. Too many eyes and ears. And I can't do that to them. I don't think they'd hate me, not like yours, but--"</p><p>"You think this century is any better?"</p><p>"No. Yes, maybe. But they're not my only family. And they weren't <i>your</i> only family, either." The pointed observation was delivered with two raised brows.</p><p>Booker's mouth twisted into a sneer, but he didn't give voice to any of the mocking thoughts. It wouldn't be fair, Nile was far too young, still. Not a child, but not really an adult, either. "Family is blood."</p><p>"More than blood," she corrected, gaze steady. "Jay, Dizzy, Gita--Family is the people we choose, Booker. And they chose you."</p><p>"They didn't have a choice."</p><p>"Oh? Did Joe or Nicky ever abandon you for a century and never come back? Haven't you always re-grouped? That's choice, not circumstance. If I'd hated all of you, think I'd have stuck around? No. Better believe I would have blown you all off and left. Almost did."</p><p>Booker shook his head, "You wouldn't understand. The bond those three have--Quynh..."</p><p>"Yeah, Quynh." Nile looked down, "Can't argue with their connection over her. But you weren't there, were you? And you still stayed connected, still fought, died, came back together."</p><p>That was half a point to Nile. Probably.</p><p>"That's family."</p><p>Booker let himself slump. Did it matter if she was right or wrong? It wasn't going to change a century of loneliness. He'd only been an immortal for a little over two, and the prospect of spending half that amount of time with no one that understood him was <i>crushing</i>. The weight of it was too much, but there would never be an escape from it.</p><p>A beep pulled him from his thoughts, and Nile was frowning down at her phone. Then she looked at him again. "I can't promise anything."</p><p>"Don't."</p><p>She stood, suddenly awkward as she stepped around the table and bent. The hug was too-brief and unexpected, and Booker found himself standing and putting a hand on her shoulder. Not reeling her back in; he wasn't sure if he could handle that much human contact right now.</p><p>"Nile, I--"</p><p>"Year and a day, Booker." She reached up and clasped his hand, then stepped back, letting it fall. "I'll text you."</p><p>He let her walk away, let her disappear again, and then turned back to the table. She'd dropped money on it while he wasn't looking, paying for their drinks. He sat back down, touching the half-empty coffee mug.</p><p>Andy had told him to have faith. He wasn't sure if he could yet.</p>
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